Has President George W. Bush been exonerated finally in the prevailing headline that he lied about Saddam Hussein having WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Destruction)? It appears so, but nobody in the present Administration wants that information to spread – even though none other than far-right Republicans at the New York Times are reporting it!

New York Times, journalist C.J. Chivers brings to light what has been suppressed for years by military officials. Between 2004 and 2010, according to The Times, troops found thousands of rusty, corroded chemical munitions throughout Iraq, though all were manufactured before 1991.

“I love it when I hear, ‘Oh there weren’t any chemical weapons in Iraq,'” former Army Sgt. Jarrod L. Taylor told Chivers. “There were plenty.”

Numerous US troops found and were exposed to chemical weapons while serving in Iraq after the 2003 invasion of the country, and they were plagued by not only the terrible aftereffects but also by substandard medical care and little recognition after the military attempted to keep the discovery of the munitions a secret.

President Barack Obama almost bombed Syria two years ago for using chemical weapons against its civilians.

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The President balked back then and a deal was struck with the regime of Bashir al-Assad to destroy Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons.

There has been no accounting for all of Syria’s weapons, and experts long feared some of them would fall into the hands of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria terrorists as they marched across eastern Syria. Reports are now suggesting that fear has been realized.

The reports are preliminary, but BBC reporter Güney Yildiz has sources in the Syrian town of Kobane, along the Turkish border, telling him ISIS has launched a chemical weapons attack against the Kurds defending the city..

It was August 2008 near Taji, Iraq. They had just exploded a stack of old Iraqi artillery shells buried beside a murky lake. The blast, part of an effort to destroy munitions that could be used in makeshift bombs, uncovered more shells.

Two technicians assigned to dispose of munitions stepped into the hole. Lake water seeped in. One of them, Specialist Andrew T. Goldman, noticed a pungent odor, something, he said, he had never smelled before.

He lifted a shell. Oily paste oozed from a crack. “That doesn’t look like pond water,” said his team leader, Staff Sgt. Eric J. Duling.
The specialist swabbed the shell with chemical detection paper. It turned red — indicating sulfur mustard, the chemical warfare agent designed to burn a victim’s airway, skin and eyes.

All three men recall an awkward pause. Then Sergeant Duling gave an order: “Get the hell out.”

Five years after President George W. Bush sent troops into Iraq, these soldiers had entered an expansive but largely secret chapter of America’s long and bitter involvement in Iraq.

From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule.

In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The New York Times found 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to nerve or mustard agents after 2003. American officials said that the actual tally of exposed troops was slightly higher, but that the government’s official count was classified.

In 2008 my life changed when Barack Obama came into my front yard on a campaign stop. I asked him why he wanted to raise taxes, and he said that he wanted to “spread the wealth.” Since then, I have gained a national following as “Joe the Plumber” and now travel the country speaking and encouraging other everyday folks to get involved in the political process.